


Found Objects and Non-Objects

by I_am_THEdragon



Category: Gangpol & Mit (Band)
Genre: Afterlife, Gen, Surreal, kuala lumpen french institute, objets trouvés, softcore tourist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:20:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25963492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_am_THEdragon/pseuds/I_am_THEdragon
Summary: Some time after being killed off in during his own live performance, Patrick the drummer finally encounters another soul in the strange afterlife known as 'The Kuala Lumpen French Institute'.





	Found Objects and Non-Objects

All Patrick could think about was his own death. That moment played over and over again in his head. The final thoughts, feelings, breath, vision, sounds… It chilled him. No person was supposed to remember their own death. At least, that wasn’t the way it worked back on Earth. Things were different in the Kuala Lumpen French institute. From the moment he’d arrived, confused and amnesiac, Patrick had longed for his memory back. The moment he was reunited with those memories, however, he questioned whether or not he was better off.

He still had trouble comprehending the fact that this bizarre realm was where he would spend his afterlife. It couldn’t have been Hell, as it was obviously not a place of eternal suffering, but it was surely too ominous and uncomfortable to be Heaven. Was it Limbo, perhaps? Whatever the case, this afterlife went by the much more palatable name of ‘the Kuala Lumpen French Institute’. In what ways that name could possibly fit this realm, Patrick did not know.

All around was a jungle of floating rectangular prisms, among other geometric forms. It was along these platforms that the lone man walked, trying to navigate the place he assumed he would be spending eternity. Scanning the surroundings, Patrick could see various tall, abstract-looking towers made up of similar geometric forms to their surroundings. They possessed several large screens, replaying video clips of life back on Earth, either to ease their viewers with memories of the living world or to taunt them with that to which they could never return. Between them was a seemingly endless, softly-coloured void.

Patrick felt so cold thinking about how he had been torn from the living world. Up until he had found his memories he had felt so unnaturally neutral. Not even slightly warm nor slightly chilly, just as if his body was immune to temperature. Now, the hairs on his arms stood on end beneath his long, grey sleeves, as chills ran through him.

In his hands, Patrick grasped a small, generic, red box of fries. The cafeteria in ‘Building F’ had given him a free pick from the menu as a “welcome” gift. Usually he would have gone for something much better than simply fries if given such an offer, especially when the menu offered pizza, burgers, hotdogs and doughnuts. When presented with the other foods, however, they’d inflated, distorted, and writhed in front of him, and some even contained inedible parts such as metal nuts and bolts and screwdrivers. Even the fries had ejected themselves out of the box as Patrick reached out to take them at first, but at least they seemed otherwise edible.

But what did it matter if he was already dead? He didn’t know why he was bothering with food anyway, when he wasn’t hungry at all. He had surely been in the Kuala Lumpen French Institute long enough that he should have felt hungry, but in his stomach he felt the same unnatural neutrality that his skin had felt upon his arrival.

Patrick glanced into the little red box and noticed that even it contained what appeared to be a metal nut and a small rubber ball. Never mind, he could eat around that. The fries were not an appetising golden-yellow, but an artificial-looking solid yellow. Hoping to at least give himself a distraction, Patrick pulled a fry out of the box and took a bite.

The texture was certainly not that of a normal fry. Not a decent quality one, at least. The potato inside more closely resembled some sort of powder with water to it. The yellow exterior was not crispy, but tough and slightly chewy. Patrick almost wondered if he was chewing plastic, or something else completely inedible. The taste of the fry was so dull and subtle he might as well have been.

Given that the fries had been a free gift, he could have discarded them right then and there, but he didn’t want to be wasteful. Hesitantly, he continued eating the bland fry, before popping another in his mouth. As he ate, Patrick was surprised to find that they did, in fact, take the edge of the memory of his own death. He could feel the sharpness of the memory slowly fading to a blur as his mind mellowed. Perhaps a snack really was what he needed.

Continuing to walk across the plethora of floating platforms in search of nothing in particular, Patrick could feel the mellowing of his mind quickly becoming dizziness. He slowed to a stop as his vision began to distort, the rigid geometric forms all around becoming soft like jelly as they swayed. They almost resembled the pizza at the cafeteria!

“What is happening to me?” Patrick thought to himself as the hallucination grew progressively worse.

His vision distorted into waves so wild that he could barely make out any of his surroundings. Even the few sounds he could hear in this strange realm began to sound warped. The man felt like he was in a washing machine, being flipped and thrown around against his will. He stumbled around as he tried in vain to regain his balance. The question repeated in Patrick’s head, what was happening to him? Had he been poisoned? He couldn’t die if he was already dead. He considered calling out for help, but as far as he knew there was no-one around to help him. Maybe this was all just a strange dream from which he was trying to wake up.

The only way Patrick could tell he had started falling was the sudden lack of pressure under his feet to signify that he was standing on solid ground. His sense of motion and bearings were still going completely wild, and all he could see was oscillating waves of different colours melding together.

Patrick wasn’t knocked out per se, but his awareness had escaped him for a moment. When it returned, he felt himself lying face-up on a hard surface. He couldn’t even tell whether or not he was in pain from the impact, but he could feel the oppressive heat. Patrick had been rather cold not so long ago, but now he felt feverishly hot as he lay there alone. Even though he was still, he felt as if he was slowly spinning. His vision was still distorted, but he could tell that wherever he had fallen into looked noticeably different to where he had been before. It was darker and less colourful. All he could do now, he assumed, was wait out these strange hallucinations. Surely this strange effect couldn’t last forever.

After some time of lying there, sweating, Patrick could feel his vision slowly returning to normal. As the waviness gradually subsided, he could make out what appeared to be various mechanical constructs above him. Pipelines, valves, and exhaust fans. Beyond them was a pitch-black void, filled partially by grey forms resembling meteorites. With only a subsiding mild dizziness left, Patrick slowly sat up to properly observe his surroundings.

There was indeed a very industrial aesthetic to wherever he had ended up. Among the pipelines, valves and exhaust fans were tubes, pistons, radiators, and… Keyboards? Not the computer kind of keyboards either, but the musical ones. It was all a very pale grey, as if made out of metals that had lost their lustre.

The surroundings emitted mechanical hums and rhythmic thumps, along with soft whistles of air and the occasional soft chime of the keyboards. Patrick’s feverish heat had softened into a surprisingly comforting warmth. Despite everything, he felt secure here. His only problem was that he wasn’t sure how to get back up to where his was, amongst the mediatheque towers. There was no rush, though.

After a while of searching around, climbing across giant pipes and exhaust fans, Patrick spotted a distant speck of bright colour that stood out vividly against the dull greys of its surroundings. He went to investigate, but the closer he got to it, the slower he advanced. He had quickly realised that the distant speck of colour was in fact another person.

The sitting figure was a pink man wearing a bright yellow hat, a blue floral shirt with flowers printed all over it, and green shorts. The colourfully-dressed man reminded Patrick of a tourist on holiday in a tropical beachside town. He watched the stranger sit silent and mostly still upon a huge ventilation box, occasionally shuffling on the spot or tapping his fingers. There was nothing even remotely threatening about this person, but Patrick chose to approach with caution regardless.

Quietly sneaking up towards the tourist, Patrick took each step with care so as not to bring attention to himself. However, one misstep landed his foot directly onto the keys of a nearby keyboard, sending out a loud, jarring chime. The stranger nearly jumped out of his skin at the sudden noise, spinning around to face Patrick with his eyes wide in surprise. Patrick jerked his foot back as if it had touched fire, then froze with the look of a deer caught in headlights.

“O-Oh! I’m sorry!” The stranger stuttered, standing up and glancing around anxiously. “I-is this your area? Should I leave?”

“No! No, no…” Patrick exclaimed, holding his hands out in a gesture for the man to stay. “Don’t go! I, uh, I…”

There was an awkward silence as both men nervously shifted their gazes around. Something about the colourfully-dressed stranger’s moustached face was oddly familiar. Although Patrick had only recently retrieved his memory from the lost and found department, he couldn’t quite recall where he’d seen such a person.

“Do you mind if I sit with you…?” Patrick asked softly.

The tourist seemed apprehensive, but obviously wanted to be polite to this man he had not yet met. He sat back down, gesturing for Patrick to take the space beside him. Patrick sat down and sighed.

“Did you fall down here too?” He asked glumly.

“Well, I didn’t fall, no.” The stranger answered, shaking his head. “I just come down here every so often. I’m sorry to hear that you fell, though. Are you okay?”

“I’m not that coordinated but I’m not usually a klutz either. I think my cafeteria food was laced with something.”

“Oh, you ate that?” The man in the tourist attire asked, looking surprised.

“I… wasn’t supposed to, was I?” Patrick responded sheepishly.

“Well, some people eat it after being here for a while. Just to break the monotony, I suppose.”

“I think seeing the food inflate like rubber and squirm like caterpillars should have been a pretty big clue to not put it in my mouth. Or even just being offered a hotdog with a screwdriver in it Maybe I need to stop by the lost and found to see if they’ve got my common sense.”

Both Patrick and the stranger chuckled at the joke, but Patrick’s expression quickly turned tense and sombre.

“I actually got my memory back just a little while ago.” He added. “I almost wish I hadn’t. I’m kind of messed up about my own death.”

“Oh…” The tourist uttered softly. “You’re not the only one. No-one likes remembering their own death, even those who went out peacefully.”

“I was killed during my own concert, would you believe it?” Patrick explained. “Not even by a crazy fan with a gun or something like that. It was by the two guys who lead the concert. They killed me and two of my bandmates in front of the whole audience.”

“Oh my, that’s horrible!” The stranger gasped. “So… You’re a musician?”

“Yeah, a drummer. Well, I was, anyway. I think I’m probably just a pile of dust and flakes back on Earth, now.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I can tell you how I died.” The tourist offered. “It’s not as harsh as what happened to you, but it’s rather embarrassing.”

“Uh, sure, go ahead.”

The stranger shuffled slightly, readjusting himself for comfort before beginning his story.

“I was on an overseas vacation.” He began. “I was a tourist, as you… Might have guessed. I wasn’t very good at being a tourist though, I was always anxious and I didn’t really know how to enjoy myself. While I was out at a café I met some a couple of folks and told them my story. It was really the first time I’d opened up that whole time. Eventually they started trying to convince me to join them in some artistic project, but I politely declined. They kept insisting so I declined, declined, declined, but they pressured me on, and well…”

The man stopped and let out a laugh. It wasn’t a happy or amused laugh, but a sort of regretful laugh.

“I panicked. I doubt they’d meant any harm, but I guess the anxiety got the better of me. I reached a breaking point and took off running out of there, straight onto the road, without even stopping to look. Then, ironically, I ended up under the wheel of a tourist bus.”

“Oh…” Patrick uttered, frowning. “Dying while on a holiday… That’s a huge shame.”

“I was supposed to be having the time of my life.” The tourist remarked quietly, staring sorrowfully into the distance.

Patrick joined his companion in staring out at the seemingly endless array of pipes, valves, exhaust fans and the like, pondering the oddly soothing warmth he felt in a place that would otherwise seem so cold.

“What is this place?” He asked. “It’s warm.”

“This is just the central heating.” The stranger replied. “Though I’m not even sure if this is what’s actually regulating the temperature back up there, to be honest.”

“So are you down here often?”

“Not really, I just come down here occasionally to be alone for a while. Most of the time I’m up in the tourist office.”

Patrick furrowed his brow and tilted his head, giving the colourfully-dressed man a questioning look. The tourist made a rather confident guess as to what his acquaintance seemed so quizzical about.

“It’s a strange thing to have in the afterlife, I know.” He remarked with a shrug. “But it’s good to stop by and decide where you want to go next. After all, we’re going to be spending the rest of eternity here, aren’t we?”

“Actually, I was wondering why you’d come all the way down here to be alone when it’s already so lonely up there.” Patrick said. “You’re the first other person I’ve found in this weird place.”

The tourist blushed slightly with embarrassment, realising his assumption had been wrong.

“O-oh, sorry.” He stuttered. “It’s… Like that, at first. It feels so empty and lonely, like you’re the only person. But as you settle in you notice more and more people. Then you find that the Kuala Lumpen French institute is actually full of all different people, and when there are so many strangers, you sometimes wanna be alone again for a while. At least I do, anyway.”

Patrick gave a sad nod, staring out into the pipeline-filled abyss. Despite the sadness and confusion, he felt much calmer than he had before he’d fallen. In the warmth and humming of the central heating, and the chiming of the keyboards that accompanied it, he found it a bit easier to not dwell on his own death so much. He wasn’t over it yet, not by any means, but what was done was done. Now there was this strange afterlife, unlike any he’d known of or prepared for, and that was what troubled him.

“I don’t get the Kuala Lumpen French Institute.” Patrick uttered with a sigh.

“I don’t know if anyone ever ‘gets’ it.” The stranger responded. “But we do get used to it, eventually. It’s not a great place, but it’s not a terrible place either. It can be fun if that’s what you make of it.”

Patrick turned to look at his companion with teary-eyes, nodding acceptingly.

“I can show you to the tourist office if you want.” The tourist offered, noticing how upset the other man was. “I… Know what it’s like to be somewhere new, and feel like I don’t belong.”

Patrick smiled, warmly and genuinely, at the offer. A simple gesture of compassion from another human had been what he had truly needed at that moment. The man in the tourist attire stood up and gestured for him to follow.

Patrick was lead up through the labyrinth of central heating and back out into more familiar territory, ‘familiar’ being a term he would use very, very loosely. From there, the two entered an area once again unfamiliar to Patrick. Unfamiliar as it was, however, it was not entirely unpleasant. The lighting was low and moody, with intimate red and green lights illuminating rolling mist and plastic tropical plants. The atmosphere was quite exotic and perhaps a bit mysterious.

The ambient lights and synthetic foliage surrounded, to Patrick’s surprise, a tall concrete wall topped with a row of barbed wire. The two men had approached a large opening in the way resembling not a built entrance, but a spot at which the wall had been broken down.

“Whoa, what’s up with this wall?” Patrick asked nervously, squinting through the fog. “Is this some kind of jail?”

“No, I don’t think so.” The stranger responded, though sounding nervous himself. “I don’t know what the wall is for, really. People come in and out of here freely all the time. I actually thought the same thing as you at first, but once I gathered the courage to follow someone through I realised this was only the tourist office, and I wasn’t going to get shot.”

At that moment, Patrick noticed the tower at the corner of the wall, with an unmanned gun perched atop it. He gulped as he imagined why it would be there, and what it would be like to get shot when you’re already done and dead. Perhaps the tourist office had once been something much less benevolent.

Beyond the cold, menacing wall lay a place Patrick couldn’t quite explain. At best, it seemed to be an amalgamation of various typical minor tourist spots. Among the scenery Patrick spotted fountains, a miniature golf course, abstract sculptures that defied the Kuala Lumpen French institute’s barely defined rules of physics, a pool, and neatly-lined decorative trees which were surely also synthetic. They were scattered among various small buildings that looked as if they couldn’t decide whether they wanted to be historical sites or hotels. It was the largest and most obvious of these that the tourist led Patrick to.

The inside of the tourist office caught Patrick by surprise simply because he’d been expecting it to not look like the inside of a tourist office, given the way everything else had been. There were shelves and racks of postcards, flyers, KLFI-themed notepads with matching pens, and even black t-shirts each bearing an odd white symbol of circles and lines. At least it now seemed that some effort was being put into making this place somewhat hospitable. Patrick wasn’t sure what good postcards would be with nowhere good to send them to, though.

“Feel free to take a flyer.” The tourist said casually as he headed behind one of the empty counters.

Patrick did as his companion offered and picked out the first flyer within his reach. It was the Objets Trouvés flyer. The name had him confused the more he thought about it. How could one call it a place of found objects when it seemed to hold only non-physical things? Patrick had been there and seen it for himself. Memories, emotions, sense of direction, sense of time, empathy, creative thoughts, and much more, all represented in abstract material forms, had been sorted and arranged into rows. He recalled passing all those unfamiliar memories, only to then come across a warping box of constantly flickering clips that he instinctually knew were once his own.

Placing the flyer back on its shelf, Patrick spotted another flyer that seemed rather unfamiliar to him. It was titled Cours de langue, and featured various geometric symbols. Curious, he picked it up and looked through it.

“In order to ensure your best experience in the Kuala Lumpen French Institute, all new arrivals are required to take a language course. The course runs repeatedly during all hours in one of our classrooms or lecture theatres. While this language course is mandatory, it does not need to be completed immediately upon arrival and can be done at any time.”

Patrick frowned as he read the introductory paragraph. Great, now he was being sent back to school again.

“To help you prepare for the language course, we have provided you a few short practice pieces that may help you better understand what you are taught.”

Below was a series of those same geometric symbols under the heading ‘BASICS’. Patrick took note of the strange hieroglyphics, but wasn’t sure what to make of them. After those was another set of symbols with the heading ‘EVERYDAY’, and finally, a set of symbols with the heading ‘SPECIAL’. He began to feel rather anxious as he came to realise that he didn’t understand any of these hieroglyphics in the slightest. What if he flunked his language course? What did he even need a language course for in the afterlife?

“Hey, uhm, you’ve done the language course already, right?” Patrick asked, turning to the tourist.

The man, who had seemingly been focused on a book on the counter in front of him, flinched with surprise at the sudden question.

“Oh! Y-yes, I did the language course, well, as soon as I found out that I needed to do it.” He answered.

“I’m just looking at this flyer, and I’m really confused.” Patrick admitted. “Really, I don’t get it at all. Even for a beginner. They will explain this more during the course, right?”

“You’re not the only confused one.” The tourist assured. “No-one I’ve encountered has been able to make head or tail of the course. All you do is sit in a room and watch a projector screen video of all those strange symbols for a few minutes, then you leave and never hear of it again.”

“Oh.” Patrick grunted, cocking his head back in confusion. “What are we supposed to learn from it, then?”

“No-one knows, really. In fact, some people don’t even bother taking the course. After all, you have all of eternity to put it off.”

Patrick gently returned the flyer to its place on the shelf, feeling somewhat unnerved but mostly puzzled. It seemed that when the Kuala Lumpen French Institute wasn’t being ominous, it was simply being strange. Perhaps it was as the other man had said, that one doesn’t ever ‘get’ this place, one only gets used to it. Patrick figured that getting used to it might take a while, though.

The man in the tourist attire had returned his attention to the book in front of him. When Patrick noticed, he couldn’t help but enquire.

“What are you reading?” He asked.

“Oh, it’s just… A photo album.” The colourfully-dressed acquaintance replied unexcitedly. “The lost and found gave it to me as a welcome gift when I first stopped by. I often wish they hadn’t, though.”

Patrick wondered if he would have received a welcome gift too, had he not fled the lost and found in horror upon reuniting with his final living memories. But the other man didn’t appear to like his very much, which seemed unusual.

“Why?” Patrick asked. “Are the photos embarrassing?”

“They’re not embarrassing photos, per se, but I do feel a bit of shame in them.” He paused hesitantly before speaking again. “…Do you want to see them?”

The tourist nervously over the photo album, which Patrick began viewing the contents of. It appeared to be filled mostly with holiday photos of the tourist at various different sites. The newly-deceased drummer could recognise a few of the locations by some distant landmarks in the backgrounds. He still couldn’t imagine what was unlikeable about such a harmless gift. Was it too heavy to carry around, perhaps?

“So is this a book of your memories?” Patrick asked. “You look like you’ve been everywhere. You must have met so many people and done so many things!”

“It’s an album of my regrets.” The tourist replied sombrely.

Patrick opened his mouth to respond to the statement, but found no words to say. He could only look back down at the photos to understand what the other man had meant. Those holiday photos featuring a lone man looking shy and out of place, even for a tourist. A lone man distant from fellow tourists who enjoyed the cultural delights around them. A lone man who looked as though he wanted desperately to have a good time, but it just wasn’t coming to him.

“I was a shy salaryman.” The man in the tourist attire began softly. “I did go to many places, yes. I tried to be a tourist, but in the end, I was still just a shy salaryman at heart. No beach, bar, or monument could ever change that.”

“…Oh.” Was all Patrick could utter as he gently closed the accursed photo album.

“Maybe it was just social anxiety getting the better of me, but I was always so on edge, I could never truly enjoy myself.” The other man continued. “I was always wondering, is everyone looking at me? Am I offending the locals? Is my house secure? Will something go wrong and leave me stranded in this unfamiliar land?”

“You just couldn’t relax?”

“Not while I constantly felt like I didn’t belong. It pains me to know that even the locals wanted me to have fun like all the other tourists. Time after time they’d invite me into their festivities, try to sell me things from their culture, show me the things they loved about their land… But I always made excuses why I couldn’t.”

Patrick ran his hand gently across the cover of the photo album. He could almost feel the regret himself. The more he heard of this story, however, the more uncannily familiar it felt, as if he’d heard it somewhere before.

“Well you travelled more than once, right?” Patrick asked. “If all your holidays turned out like that, why’d you keep going?”

“Because I wanted to have a good time, I really did!” The tourist answered with pain in his voice. “I wanted to go wild with the locals, I wanted to make the most out of every hotspot I visited, I wanted to let loose and bring back crazy memories! Each time I told myself, this will be it, this will be the trip on which I leave the ‘shy salaryman’ behind and show the real me. But that was the real me.”

The man gently pulled the photo album from Patrick’s hands and held it against his chest, wrapping his arms around it and closing his eyes tightly.

“The only thing holding me back was myself.” He continued. “I was so worried I would do something I’d regret that I couldn’t let myself have fun, and ironically, I always returned with more regrets than memories. Now I have a whole album of them.”

When the colourfully-dressed man opened his eyes again, they glistened with tears. The tears were not as of much concern to Patrick as the stunned and fearful look that was starting to creep across the man’s face as he stared blankly ahead.

“A-are you okay?” The drummer asked, subconsciously reaching his hand forward to place it on his companion’s shoulder in comfort.

“I-I’m fine.” The tourist stuttered, shaking his head as he stepped back from Patrick’s reach. “I’m sorry, I just… I still sometimes get a bit worked up when I talk about that, even after all this time. It was the last story I told, right before my death.”

“Ah geez, I’m sorry I made you talk about it.” Patrick apologised, holding his hands to his head. “I had no idea, I am so sorry!”

“No no, it’s okay, I sort of need to get that out sometimes.” The other man assured, his anxiety slowly subsiding. “Honestly, I’m sorry I had to be the first other person you met in the afterlife. I gave a miserable first impression, didn’t I?”

“No, I think you’re alright.” Patrick remarked with a shrug. “I know who you are now. You’re the Softcore Tourist.”

“…Softcore?” The tourist uttered with audible confusion.

“One of the last songs I played, I swear it could have been about you. I always messed up the tempo at the end because I don’t do mellow songs well. That, and the song always made me sad. I could kind of relate.”

The ‘softcore tourist’ stared at the ground, frowning. Maybe something had come of the encounter that lead to his demise. Or maybe it was just a big coincidence. He didn’t feel he was important enough for someone’s art. Patrick, meanwhile, stared out of the window, watching a few other people amble around outside the tourist office. Some of the people chatted to each other, some stopped to admire the surreal and synthetic decor. This little spot in the Kuala Lumpen French institute wasn’t nearly as bad as it had looked when he had first approached it.

Patrick wondered if this tourist office was a simile to the Kuala Lumpen French Institute itself. Something that seemed ominous and threatening at first, then felt perplexing and raised many questions, but was ultimately not so harmful or malevolent. Perhaps he was just overthinking. There were still many things about this afterlife Patrick had to just accept he may never understand. If there was anticipate answers to, it was the actions of dead souls inhabiting it.

“I hope it doesn’t bother you that I’m asking this, but why would you want to stay in a tourist office?” Patrick asked. “I mean, after how you were with tourism while you were alive, and all the regrets, doesn’t it bother you being here?”

The tourist inhaled and exhaled deeply as he tried to come up with a way to explain his choice.

“After everything, I’m still, as you would call it, ‘a softcore tourist’.” He answered. “I could go out and explore this great, abstract afterlife on my own two feet, but what’s the point? I have all these flyers and postcards, and I’ve managed to make myself comfortable here.”

“Oh.” Patrick grunted, scratching his head with his brow furrowed.

“And you know what?” The other man continued. “If I was sent back to the living world right now, with all my regrets and a second chance, I don’t think I’d return a changed man. I’d probably do the same thing as before. I’d just keep wasting my travels as a shy salaryman trying to be a tourist.”

Perhaps properly understanding the other inhabitants of the Kuala Lumpen French Institute would take quite some time, though.


End file.
